The BBC have launched a new online database of the archives of the Radio Times. The project has the memorable title: The BBC Genome Project .

This site contains the BBC listings information which the BBC printed in Radio Times between 1923 and 2009. You can search the site for BBC programmes, people, dates and Radio Times editions. Interestingly you can also correct their information and add some notes about the item if you were involved.

It may be useful to find a long forgotten BBC programme, research a particular person or browse your own involvement with the BBC.

For this project, it’s an interesting way to check if there may be film of the University in the BBC archives.

For instance by using the advance search of the Radio Times for mentions of J.R.R. Tolkien we can see that he was on late night radio talking about Anglo-Saxon verse in 1938 here

and was also the subject of a rather wonderful documentary in 1968 – ‘Tolkien in Oxford‘: